Fraters Libertas

Winning Ugly

The NBA Western Conference finals begin tonight featuring the LA (nee Minneapolis) Lakers and our own Minnesota T-Wolves. The local club got there by triumphing over the Sac Kings in a do-or-die game 7 that proved to be gut-wrenching, red hot anxiety-enflaming, hang-on-by-the-fingernails drama. In other words, it was a typical Minnesota sports experience. With our local teams, this happens all the time. For those not from here, let me be clear, this is not a good thing.

For the fan, the experience of winning such a game isn't that different from losing. It's still mostly painful. Your very real hopes of abstract sports glory all riding on the capricious fortunes of a group of guys entirely incapable of seizing a victory that's already lying their in their grasp. A group of guys, whom you've devoted your undying devotion to because they're wearing shirts with the name of your city on them, who seem intent on giving the opposition every chance to steal the game away, and with it our dreams, forever.

As the game progresses you feel the rapid bleeding away of your serenity and your happiness, to then experience the methodical, relentless ratcheting up of your anxiety and the awakening of all the echoes of Minnesota sports failures past. You sweat, you gnash your teeth, your temperature rises, your heart races, you get a headache. And even if your team somehow wins the game, as the Wolves did on Wednesday, you still had to go through all that turmoil. And all for a slight sense of relief afterwards. Not happiness, not rejoicing, but momentary relief that it all didn't end as horribly as you thought it would.

After the game I was listening to KSTP's Tommy Mischke and he was articulating this experience brilliantly. Despite his better judgment, he got sucked in to the Wolves series and game 7 (which ended just as he came on the air at 10 PM) and he likened the fan's experience of them winning in the manner they did to surviving a free floating trip down a raging, white water rapids. You're only reaction is "oh well, I guess I didn't drown today." After thrashing about, clawing and scratching to stay alive, that's all the benefit you get.

The negative affect a game like this can have on your psyche was evident in Mischke's reaction to a crank caller he had later in the show. The guy just babbled on and started singing and whistling before hanging up, which prompted Mischke to pause for a beat, then say

"Sir .... I rarely wish AIDS on anyone. But I sincerely pray to God that in the next 48 hours you learn that you are HIV positive."

In context, with Mischke's mild mannered delivery, it was hilarious (whereas if Michael Savage mouthed the same words, it probably would have been cause for a national uproar and boycott).

Needless to say, professional sports Minnesota style are not good for one's health. As proof, Mischke referenced the local legend that Fran Tarkenton's father had a heart attack during the 1975 Vikings-Cowboys playoff game, as a result of the spirit immolating last second Hail Mary pass which cost the Vikings the game and a trip to the Super Bowl. According to Snopes, the Hail Mary pass didn't actually cause Fran's dad's death, although Dallas Tarkenton did die during the game:

Some fans, determined to find more than coincidence in coincidences, later concluded that the infamous "Hail Mary" game had actually caused the death of the elder Tarkenton. The terrible combination of the Cowboys' last-minute comeback, the controversial officiating on key plays, the specter of a referee's being hit in the head with a bottle on national television, and yet another crushing defeat for his son's team had, they assumed, induced Dallas Tarkenton's fatal heart attack.

But it wasn't so. If nothing else, at least Fran Tarkenton had the consolation of knowing that nothing about that fateful game had anything to do with his father's death. Dallas Tarkenton, Sr., was stricken during the third quarter, before the "Hail Mary" pass, before the controversy over the lack of an offensive pass interference call, before the bottle-throwing incident, before the Vikings' final defeat, and died without regaining consciousness. He never saw the end of the game.

Perhaps, as a sportswriter suggested at the time, in an odd sort of way, God was looking out for one of His ministers that day by calling him home a little early.

Amen. Any Vikings fan old enough to remember that game will attest, getting yanked through this veil of tears in the third quarter (before he had to suffer through Drew Pearson blatantly committing offensive pass interference on the Hail Mary pass, which the refs ignored) was indeed a mercy killing.

In recent years, I've often come to the fleeting conclusion that putting so much emotion into outcomes of sporting events is foolishness. To put up with all of this trouble, all for a contest in which I have no real material interest. If I gave it all up on my own, or all the teams moved away because we wouldn't build them publicly financed stadiums, maybe that would be a good thing.

Mischke echoed those comments last night. And it seems there are others out there who have already adopted the right frame of mind. Take the Lakers' Shaquille O?Neal, for example. He provided this lesson in proper perspective (and brilliant disrespect), when asked on Wednesday if he planned to watch the T-Wolves-Kings game (the winner of which would go on to face his team, the Lakers):

"I'd rather watch you walk butt-naked down Sunset Boulevard," O'Neal told an aging sports reporter.

Knowing the slovenly, gluttonous personal habits of most sports writers (and those are just the women), that's a guy who REALLY doesn't care about watching sports. I can't say I'm there yet. But I am proud to say I will be skipping watching the Wolves game tonight.

That's right, I'll be at the Metrodome instead, watching the Twins and White Sox battle it out for first place in the American League Central. She starts at 7:05 tonight. Baby steps, that's how I'll kick this addiction.